Category Archives: Journal

I was invited to present as a panelist at the World Environment Day forum in June 2014 at Mote Marine. The theme of World Environment Day centered on the release of the United Nation’s Small Island Developing States Report, and five panelists addressed how Sarasota is addressing the findings and concerns in the report. The panelists included:

Patricia Beneke, Director for the UNEP Regional Office for North America

Barbara Lausche, Director of the Marine Policy Institute at Mote

Sara Kane, Public Outreach Manager for the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program

Dr. Jennifer Schafer, Executive Director of the Science and Environment Council of Southwest Florida

Tony Stefan, past chair of the Myakka River Branch of the United States Green Building Council

It was a privilege to participate in this unique event, and I learned a great deal from our hosts, the Report, and the panelists! My presentation on the Green Building Economy begins at 53:00.

I was invited to present to a joint session of the AIA Gulfcoast Chapter and the Nation Discussion Group in September, 2013. The theme of the event was Global Warming and Architecture. Joel Fedder, John Lambie and I presented. As the keynote speaker, I broadened the familiar discussion of architecture, the design of individual buildings and their impacts on the environment, to encompass the built environment as a whole.

The main theme of the presentation centers on placemaking, and how a design ethic that places human beings at the center of planning and design decisions can have multiple knock-on effects, reduction of carbon emissions being one of them.

These green home designs find a balance between domestic comfort on one hand, while limiting size on the other. Efficient floor plans form the essence of green living: every square foot of the home needs to be climate controlled, generally consuming fossil fuel resources and polluting the atmosphere in the process. Where the building itself is concerned, all of it exists through the extraction, manufacture and transportation of material resources. Simply by reducing their size, these designs reduce the impacts that buildings and their construction place on the environment.Continue reading →